Rain, capsule Snow, Sleet? To Infinity, and Beyond
In visiting the site for the US Postal Service, Beg to Differ was surprised to find that the characters from Disney Pixar’s Toy Story 3 had the Postal Service totally surrounded (see the screen capture below). And we wondered: is this kind of promotional co-branding the future of marketing for government agencies? And is that such a bad thing?
It’s not flying; it’s falling with style
But it goes beyond the full Toy Story wrapper around the Web site (although that’s the one that really surprised me):
“The US Postal Service is also using an integrated campaign to tie its products to the family friendly Disney film. Disney agreed to produce the USPS’ springtime consumer-focused campaign, based on the Postal Service’s commercials starring “Al the Letter Carrier” promoting its Flat-Rate boxes. The push includes TV, print, direct mail, a website, banner ads, search, e-mail and in-store signage. USPS’s agency Campbell-Ewald worked on the campaign.” (from Brands Want Summer Film Magic at DMNews.com)
Here’s more info from a very promotional (non-critical) article.
But what do you think?
How much co-promotion is too much? It seems pretty benign tying public brands to universally-loved and family friendly movies like this. But how far can tis go?
Please weigh in with your comments!
Cool blog! I dont think Ive seen all the angles of this subject the way youve cleared them out. Youre a true star, a rock star man. Youve got so much to say and have a lot of knowledge about the subject that I think you should just teach a class about it…HaHa!